History PLC AP Writing Exam Analysis

AP Writing Exam Trends


Strengths - What are strong responses showing evidence of?



Weaknesses - What negative trends do we see that can be addressed through strategic instruction? 


Where's Dave?

Write Like This

Mrs. Holbert read "Write Like This"

Practical Takeaways

1. To provide students with an opportunity to see real-world value in writing, locate applications (career and college) that contain elements of thoughtfully writing on demand.

2. To mentor texts as models, emphasizing writing is never finished, model the writing process for the students. Show them the struggles accomplished writers experience during the writing process and the ways to improve.

3. To help students see real-world examples of writing, while improving prior knowledge and background about the world, introduce the Article of the Week (AoW) task. News stories, essay, editorials, blogs, and speeches to read then consider the importance of this information to their lives.

4. To expand upon cause and effect relationships, sharpen their thinking by  "A Leads to B". This strategy provides a way for students to organize their thoughts with connections of events.

5. To move students into analysis and interpretation, utilize interpretation of charts such as the artist Phillip Niemeyer's chart, symbolically capturing American life in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

6.Emphasize the revision process with RADaR: Replace(words/sentences), Add (new descriptive information), Delete (unrelated, unnecessary, repetition), and Reorder (for better flow)

Writing Matters in Every Classroom

We are reading Writing Matters in Every Classroom!